Antarctica ice loss increases six fold since 1979

15th January, 2019 10:40:20

Global warming is melting ice in Antarctica faster than ever before—about six times more per year now than 40 years ago—leading to increasingly high sea levels worldwide, scientists warned Monday, reports AFP. Already, Antarctic melting has raised global sea levels more than half an inch (1.4 centimeters) between 1979 and 2017, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer-reviewed US journal.

And the pace of melting is expected to lead to disastrous sea level rise in the years to come, according to lead author Eric Rignot, chair of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.

A rise of 1.8 meters (six feet) by 2100, as some scientists forecast in worst-case scenarios, would flood many coastal cities that are home to millions of people around the world, previous research has shown.